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Chilly Cupz owner Trey Dougherty didn’t want any kids in Eugene to go back to school empty-handed. So he went door to door for donations, grabbed money from his own cash register and bought hundreds of backpacks along with school supplies to put in them.
After selling Hawaiian shaved ice all summer from his west Eugene food cart, Trey Dougherty headed to the store with $1,000 he raised for this year’s back-to-school drive.
It took a few trips, but Dougherty’s home was soon filled with hundreds of backpacks, a new tradition he started after opening Chilly Cupz last July.
Many of the people he gives backpacks to are also his customers: neighborhood kids thirsty for a cold treat on relentlessly sunny 90-degree days.
“The support is mutual,” he said. “I’m giving back to a community I’ve grown up in my whole life.”
It’s a full-circle moment for Dougherty, who went to elementary and middle school with the same people now stopping by Chilly Cupz to grab backpacks for their own kids.
He got a variety — pink, green, neutral blacks and greys, Mario, Spider-Man, Pac-Man — suiting as many kids as the fundraiser allowed.
One kid who came by the food cart told him he couldn’t find a backpack with his favorite color, yellow.
“Well, that’s awesome,” Dougherty told him, grabbing a yellow bag, “because I have one.”
“Making a kid’s day makes my day for weeks,” he said.
Dougherty and the owner of Bro Tato — a neighboring food cart — teamed up for the first backpack drive last summer. They spent hours handing out fundraising flyers to police and fire departments, libraries and local businesses.
“It’s a fun day,” Dougherty said. “You take the whole workday and don’t make any money, but the smiles are amazing.”
After buying 250 backpacks, they had enough donations to turn the drive into a free block party: As parents picked up backpacks and other school supplies, their kids enjoyed a bounce house, waterslide, free popcorn and lemonade.
When the other food truck owner left the pod, Dougherty organized the second drive on his own.
He didn’t get a bounce house or waterslide this year, but he purchased even more backpacks — about 330 — thanks to community donations and money from his own register.
In late August, the night before the drive, Dougherty’s grandmother came over to help fill the backpacks with pencils, water bottles, folders and other donated supplies.
“Trey, this is a lot of backpacks,” she’d said to him. “Are we packing all of these tonight?”
He answered by buying her dinner — a big pizza pie — and getting to work.
“My mom and my grandma always say if someone needs help, help them,” Dougherty said. “It makes you feel good knowing you helped somebody get to a better place.”
Dougherty grew up in Eugene, where about one in five people live in poverty.
He had, in his words, “come from zero.” He spent years delivering food, saving just enough to buy a food cart and outfit it for his Hawaiian shaved ice business, inspired by his family’s Lahaina roots.
“We live in a hard world. Everything is expensive,” Dougherty said. “I’m a small-business owner myself. Things go up every year, I get it.”
Dougherty doesn’t have kids of his own, but he usually serves kids every day his seasonal business is open. He’ll sometimes make free shaved ice cups for those who don’t have enough money on them or families who can’t afford one.
It can be hard asking for help, even when you really need it, Dougherty said. He doesn’t expect people to thank or even engage with him when they stop by for the backpacks.
But a lot of people did thank him, in their own words. One mother broke down as she picked out backpacks for her kids.
“We really needed this,” she told him.
